1974 RX-4/929 wagon. Upgrades Round 1

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Jun 25, 2012 4:31 pm

Ahhhh! interesting.

Yes I looked firstly at where the hose runs to the bottom of the radiator, but it was dripping there, not leaking from there.

Looked at where the hose meets the water pump, it looks like it is leaking from there, but when I had the car running and I got underneath, I couldn't see anything coming out. Hmmmmm.

I think I will just keep topping it up for the moment and clean up the dribble marks that have blown everywhere in the wind and then get it up on a hoist and have a proper look - including checking the welsh plugs!

Oh and one of those 5 speeds I bought off you is going in soon too as I worked out, with my new TomTom, that the speedo is waaaay out of whack, what I thought was 100 is roughly 90 (no wonder people were flying past me), so at 100kms, it's actually turning 4,000 rpm. That's crazy revs, but the whole driveline came out of the yellow wagon and it looked completely original.... (though people think the gearbox or diff is out of something else and that's why the speedo and gearing is crazy).

philip · **Posted:** Tue Jun 26, 2012 2:54 pm

Don't forget to check this hose. It is the cause of many blown heads and it's a
bitch to get to!!!!!! :evil:

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:38 pm

Will do! Cheers for the heads up!

(ps I looked at that photo and thought, hmmmm, I wonder what those wheels are in the background.... then realised that was my last house :lol:

).

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sun Jul 01, 2012 8:42 pm

No driving this weekend (it's been a house resto/Motorcycle weekend) BUT I did finish off the headunit install inside the glovebox and get everything hooked up. No more crackly AM radio about cheese and the ^$%#^*! footy....

Headunit needed to sit inside the "guts" of the Glovebox:

Lots of measuring and thinking with the glovebox lid and how it will all fit in, look factory AND have the lid close while a USB stick is plugged in.

Some cutting, plastic swarf going all over the kitchen (SWMBO didn't see the mess I made, thank christ for dustbusters), some bracketry made at work and voila!

The red wires are for the cigarette socket in the cargo area, the white wire is active when the ignition is on. I'm going to run both to the engine bay and put a relay/fuse block in. From there I'll also put a few other lines in for lights and other stuff that I'll need.
With the door closed:

And...

The other thing I'm happy with is that the aerial splitter that a techie at work made for me works a treat. FM reception is perfect on the head unit and I can also play AM on the original head unit, with both running off the same aerial. For the front speakers, I used some slim tv speakers that I ripped out of a dead plasma tv we got given, perfect for hiding up under the dashboard, plus the give the front of the car the high range, with the lower range coming from the rear. (Doesn't matter where bass range comes from, but high range does matter). It actually sounds surprisingly good! I even dragged SWMBO out of the warm house on a cold evening to come and have a look at the setup. :lol:

I was also just going to lob in and get a roadworthy done, but I went to use the handbrake on the weekend and realised how much it has stretched, so I will just bite the bullet and get the brake place next door to the Road Worthy testing station to check everything and whip me up a new handbrake cable.

Unfortunately, I have also booked the Triumph in for a service AND I still haven't started on rebuilding the front end on the Rover so I'm going to have to start selling body parts/more stuff I have lying around as I have kinda run out of money! Boooooooo-urns.

timmy201 · **Posted:** Sun Jul 01, 2012 11:34 pm

ewokracing wrote:

Boooooooo-urns.

I was saying Booooooo-urns!

I like the choice of music and it's errr sneaky message

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Jul 03, 2012 4:49 pm

hehehe. Yes I have, erm, "eclectic" music tastes. Drives people a bit nuts at times.

I work in IT (but I am not an IT person) so sayings like "booooo urns" are common in my office and team. :lol:

A fellow forum member looks like he'll be getting the spare rear bumper I have, which might motivate me to pull the towbar out of storage and get that powdercoated and fitted up as well. In turn, that might prompt me to pull my other finger out and weld up my 6x4 trailer for some country wrecking yard shenanigans.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:07 pm

Right. I bought tyres for the Rover last year, have barely driven more than a thousand kays on them and I'm paranoid that they will flat spot. So two weeks ago I went to start the wagon so I could move it to drive the Rover around the block.

Wagon wouldn't start. :evil:

I think the solar trickle charger was topping the batter up enough for a few cranks, but I've got a feeling that the plugs are fouled from the engine running rich (the tailpipe is black), hence why it wouldn't start. Then the battery started going flat. First world problems and all that.

So I lashed out and bought another ctek and have been alternating between charging up the wagon and Rover batteries every few days.
In the meantime, I also did some investigating and I think I've found the coolant leak.

It looks like the coolant is coming from the thermostat housing and with the airstream in the engine bay as the car is moving, it's blown down the side of the front timing cover, roughly where it meets the block.

You can just make out the greeny stuff on the alloy cover in the second picture above.

I haven't had the time to disassemble anything this week but I will try and tackle it over the next few weeks.

I have also started to bring stuff (ie rusty Mazda crap) home from the "temporary" storage solution (ie my brothers garage) and have discovered boxes and boxes of things I had forgotten all about like spare tail lights, sets of wheels, gauges and so on. I also bought some period looking 13in racing tyres and an original Bridgestone whitewall tyre for another Mazda project in my head, and I bought some decent seat covers to throw on when I'm working on the car so I don't rip the original vinyl seats (or burn my bum in the coming summer on hot vinyl).

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sun Sep 02, 2012 6:54 pm

So after the car wouldn't start, a friend of mine that I work with and I decided to have a crack at it on the weekend.

I left the battery on the ctek for a few days, put a few more litres of fuel in the tank and gave it a few cranks.
We had spark, we had fuel, but it still wouldn't fire. Out of curiousity Steve poured some fuel down the carb throats and wouldn't you know, it coughed and spluttered into life.

I think that even though the sight glass showed the carburettor bowl as full, for some reason a jet might have been blocked or maybe I was using too much choke. Anyway, it starts fine now. We also got it idling nicely.

We checked the dwell, that was ok, points gap was fine, the spark plugs were gapped, but they were black. So it's running rich, which the blue-ish smoke out the back seems to suggest.

The sight glass on the carb shows the fuel level as being over the factory line, and from a bit of reading, that means the carb will run rich. We didn't adjust the float, but we did look at the timing and it was approx. double the factory timing (8 degrees, it looked around to be 16, so we backed it off a bit).

Unfortunately, we did a compression check and it's a bit low, barely 100psi on the front cylinder and roughly 135 on the remaining three. I'll have a play with the carb when I get back from OS in a few weeks. At the same time, I also noticed that coolant is leaking from the join between the waterpump and the lower radiator hose, and the leak is pretty major. I'll pull the cooling system apart when I get back as well and replace a few things like the thermostat housing and if it needs it, the water pump.

timmy201 · **Posted:** Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:39 am

ewokracing wrote:

Unfortunately, we did a compression check and it's a bit low, barely 100psi on the front cylinder and roughly 135 on the remaining three. I'll have a play with the carb when I get back from OS in a few weeks. At the same time, I also noticed that coolant is leaking from the join between the waterpump and the lower radiator hose, and the leak is pretty major. I'll pull the cooling system apart when I get back as well and replace a few things like the thermostat housing and if it needs it, the water pump.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

Could you not wire up a kill switch to the battery to prevent current draw when it's turned off? (and maybe fend off wannabe thieves)

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Sep 24, 2012 5:00 pm

Yep, I will need a battery kill switch at some stage for racing/track stuff, so it's on the cards.

Just got told I will be made redundant soon so this is going on the backburner for a while.

jdmrx2 · **Posted:** Wed Oct 17, 2012 3:57 am

Any new updates on the wags?

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sun Oct 21, 2012 3:19 pm

No not really.

I've been away track marshalling, then camping, then doing some stuff on the Rover/House/Triumph. It has gathered dust.

I have brought home my first pride and joy and have started stripping all the rotary gear out of it, so the sale of that stuff will hopefully get the wagon on the road.

I think I've also secured work until the new year which means I should be able to get back into it soon.

Buzz3n · **Posted:** Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:51 am

Love the wags, once I'm home will have to do a chatch up, pretty sure we are real close.. What wheels did you find at brothers? We need details man :lol:

, also what line of work are you in?

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:57 pm

I think we are actually, but I am in the SE now, I was in Essendon for a few years.

Work:
- logistics
- Human Resources
- Office Admin management
- Asset management

blah blah blah all white collar stuff. have done over 120 job applications since December 2009, had 2 interviews. It's fricken tough out there these days...

Wheels:

I've got Rays 14in and CSA copies of a Hayashi Street in a 13. The ad is on ausrotary somewhere.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sat Nov 10, 2012 4:33 pm

Head is going off to be reconditioned next week, should also be picking up a new water pump sometime next week as well.

fingers crossed I should have it on the road before the end of November.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sun Nov 25, 2012 2:54 pm

Finally some progress. Have had a few setbacks with work, the weather, other cars & bikes needing attention etc. Also had a few wins which has been nice.

I have managed to sell a lot of rotary stuff out of my old 1300 which hopefully means that the wagon will be on the road shortly. The cylinder head is on its way to be reconditioned, Phil was right, the hose he pointed out was cactus and for a piece of mind, the water pump and probably the timing chain tensioner will also get replaced.

Interesting thing though, when we pulled the head off, there were shiny "paths" between the bores on the block, as though coolant had been leaking out of the head/block and washing over the gasket and into the bores - hence the burnt coolant smell. There's a clean spot on the cylinder combustion chamber of number 4 piston, but the top of piston number 1 looks like it has also been "washed" by coolant. The intake valve of number 1 piston is also carboned up pretty badly. All in all, it's a pretty tired motor, much as I suspected.

The motor was also full of sludge from missed oil changes. Some of the main head bolts came out of the block with grey chunks.

I'll be doing my best to clean everything up, but I'd say that a full rebuild for the VC is on the cards sometime soon.

With all the rocker gear and cam removed.

You can see where the exhaust gasket has been baked onto the block and where the gasket is clean between the cylinder bores.

It's a bit blurry, but you can see how badly carboned up number 1 cylinder was.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Nov 26, 2012 3:09 pm

I dropped past the engine builder/head reconditioner last night expecting to just leave the head, but we stayed around for a few hours and the bloke did it for me there and then. Nice. :tu:

In previous posts I've mentioned how untouched the yellow 929 wagon was (the one I cut up). The engine guy said that the head had the original factory valve stem seals and basically, it looked like the engine had never been apart. Going by some sealant around the water pump, I'd say the pump has been replaced at some stage and that's about it.
With the head done, hopefully the engine will have a bit more oomph. Now I just have to find an electric distributor and bolt up a 5spd.

Oh and I read the cam numbers, it is stamped/embossed with "453", so there may even be a better factory cam out there. I'll do some sleuthing.

Nice and shiny:

rx7_ben · **Posted:** Tue Nov 27, 2012 9:21 am

Too many moving parts for me :shock:

Good progress though mate, I'm sure it will be heaps better with a 5 speed!

philip · **Posted:** Tue Nov 27, 2012 9:20 pm

Hey Geoff,
I might know someone with a few electronic dissies stashed away! :wink:

ewokracing · **Posted:** Wed Nov 28, 2012 6:02 pm

ha! do tell!

I haven't gone back to that wreckers yet either, but with the wagon I think I'll be there a lot.

1974 RX-4/929 wagon. Upgrades Round 1

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